If You Can't Create, It Ain't Worth It

Scott McLeod makes a fine point, one of the top concerns about the iPad for teachers and education technologists is that you can’t really use the device for creating anything.
If there is going to be a future of one-to-one computing and educational assessment then people will have to create devices that lend themselves to production.

I believe the jury is still out on this debate. Even if the iPad isn’t the tool that helps move students to the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy, it may enhance education. It certainly has the potential to increase student engagement, which has been found to also increase student achievement.

The problem with going to education conferences and learning about investor views about companies and the financing of new experiments in edtech is that you only really hear from them, and you only really hear from the company executives who have experienced some level of success.
If the users, the learners, had more of a voice, we could really ramp up the production of devices and uses of those devices that help education.
Right now, the iPad is really more like the paper pad that a waitress carries around. You can make some notations on it. It’s also like the menu. The dining customer can choose what he wants, sample it, enjoy it, but it all ends up in the same place after the meal.
What would be profoundly earth-shattering for education, in general, would be a device that grows out of involvement and collaboration between the learners. I don’t think, actually it’s going to be a device. It’s going to be a method.
As soon as teachers and principals allow students to access their open source enabled devices in school, that’s when true education technology develops. The question is, are investors and the senior executives who know how to grow these companies spending the kind of time with these people to understand it when it happens?